A taste of the Orient lands in Lake Area

Fourteen local businesses and industries
formed teams to compete in the Christus-St. Patrick Foundation’s
inaugural Dragon Boat
Races Saturday.

The races, an ancient Chinese
tradition, were held at the seawall and benefited
the Children’s Miracle Network Hospital.

“Dragon boating is China’s national
sport, one that’s over 2,000 years old and was brought to North America
about 30 years
ago, since then it's spread like wildfire,” said Matt Roberts, co-owner
of 22 Dragons, which supplied the boats and team training
for the event. “Basically you’ve got a team of 22 people,
with 20 of them being paddlers, one person who steers the boat
and a drummer who is there to motivate the team and keep their
timing together. The rowers paddle to the beat of the drum.”

“We thought that Lake Charles would be a
perfect venue for this event, with the beautiful lakefront, wonderful
park and very
civic minded attitude of the community,” said Christus-St. Patrick Hospital Administrator Donald Lloyd. “This is one of our
major fundraisers for our pediatric initiatives and we are just
super delighted with the turnout. We filled up all of the
available boats and still had teams trying to get in. This is the
first time we’ve held this event, but it certainly will
not be the last.”

The 14 competing teams included local businesses and industries such as Citgo, Coushatta, Entergy and Kohl’s, many of which
viewed the day as a valuable team-building exercise.

“This is a great team-building
opportunity for these businesses to get different people from different
parts of their organizations
who may not know each other or work directly with one another all
of the time, working together. Everyone here has the same
goal, getting across the finish line first,” said Chuck O’Connor, annual events manager for the Christus-St. PatrickFoundation.

A representative from team Citgo said the squad was determined to go home with the race’s first-place traveling trophy.

“We put our team together two months
ago, we did a tryout and selected the 25 strongest people and then
started paddling practice pool, we just started getting in sync and dictating the
paddler’s rhythm,” said Rodrigo Cardoso, a process engineer for Citgo.

The team in the event’s first qualifying round of, known as a heat, had scored a time of 55.6 seconds for the 200-meter course.

“It’s just like a drag race, you’ve
just got to get from point to another. The hardest thing is keeping the
balance and keeping
the 20 paddlers moving their oars in the same direction at the
same time, when they get out of sync the boat starts moving
towards one side or another,” Cardoso said.

The team for National Networks began practicing the night before the race but was hopeful that they would place first.

“In the first qualifying rounds, we were three seconds behind the top team. We’re going to beat them, we’ll put a hole in their
boat if we have to,” David Poole, employee of National Networks said.

In the finals, the Citgo team beat out National Networks for the top prize. L'Auberge placed third, edging out one of the Christus-St. Patrick teams, the Holy Rowers, in the third-place race.